Hi, it's David Remnick, and I've got some news for you.

We're headed to the Tribeca Festival for a special live taping of the New Yorker Radio Hour.

We'll be doing a one-night-only show at the festival's 25th anniversary.

So come out and join us on Wednesday, June 10th at 815.

Tickets are available now at Tribecafilm.com slash audio. That's Tribecafilm.com

slash audio.

This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Jemiel Jan Kochai, read his story,

The Twice Widowed Hala Hele from the June 8th, 2026 fiction issue of the magazine.

Kochae is the author of the novel 99 Nights in Logar

and the story collection, The Haunting of Haji Hotak and other stories,

which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2022 and won the

2003 Aspen Ward's Literary Prize.

Now here's Jamil Jan Kochi.

The Twice Widowed Khalahili

We were two hours late, but on time, and The Twice Wittled Chalah Hilley

We were two hours late but on time, and our husbands had been pacing since six in the kitchen,

and in the living room and out on the porch, and even as they drove quietly fuming past rivers or fields or stoplights,

we noticed them pacing inside their own heads heads back and forth and back and forth,

half here, half there, and that other time, their eyes scanning street lights and road signs and

cul-de-sacs and the salvaged Honda Civics parked in front of Madi John's house, where,

...